Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Baking Our Best

In some churches, clergy and altar guild members stand in
the sacristy after the service, encouraging each other as they struggle to
consume the mountain of consecrated wafers that were left over after Communion.
In our church, however, a line of children quickly forms at the sacristy door
in case there may be some extra Communion bread for them to eat. Someone from
our bread guild bakes fresh loaves each week, and for many the soft, subtly
sweet morsel received at the altar rail is the highlight of their Sunday
worship. On the rare occasion that the bread runs out before the last few
parishioners receive, we turn to wafers, and, when I place the round,
cross-marked disc into a child’s hands, he is likely to look at me and then his
parent with a face that says, “What’s that? I’m not eating that. You might as
well have handed me a Brussels sprout.”

Most churches use wafers—mass produced, perfectly circular,
Styrofoam-esque pieces of baked flour and water that hardly resemble bread.
Actually, I like the wafers for their simplicity and consistency, and, while I
agree that the bread is far tastier, I like the bread more because of the symbol
that it represents. Both become the Body of Christ—the real presence of the
incarnate Son of God—of which we partake by an inexplicable mystery. Between the
two, there is no difference in the “Jesus-ness” that is conveyed, but, when the
bread is baked by members of our congregation, I am drawn into the communal
Body of Christ that the congregation itself represents in a way that I find
harder to see when the origins of the Communion bread are largely unfamiliar to
us.

There has been a liturgical renewal of sorts as more and
more congregations use loaves instead of wafers. Of course, before there were
wafers, all Christian communities used loaves that were indistinguishable from
the loaves that they bought at the market or baked for their families. In the
ancient church, before the clergyperson presided at the Eucharist, he would
collect both bread and wine from members of the congregation and use them at
the Lord’s Table. In a very clear and real way, the offering of the people was
the substance of the communal meal that they shared in the name of the Lord. Of
course, some loaves were better than others. Some were overbaked and crumbly.
Some were underbaked and chewy. Some were moldy. That happens sometimes. And, as
is so often the case in the history of organized religion, church officials
stepped in and, in an attempt to make everything better, messed everything up.
To ensure that the Communion bread was as perfect as the Christ it represented,
religious professionals (i.e. monks) took on the responsibility of baking
uniform portions of unleavened bread, simultaneously eliminating the
imperfections of congregation-provided bread and the joy that those people got from
bringing their best, if flawed, offering to God.

Until then, the principle “sacrifice” of the Eucharistic
celebration was one made by the congregation as they, through their offerings, participated
in the sacrifice that Christ had made upon the cross. Just as Jesus gave up his
life for the sake of the world, so, too, did his followers give up their lives
in his service, and their bread was a token of that. Although by that time martyrdom
had become a rarity, Christians were drawn personally into Christ’s death by
bringing something of themselves—something they had made or worked to buy—and
offering it to God in the Communion service. Once their bread was no longer
needed, their symbolic sacrifice had been effectively replaced. Without the
bread of the people, the sacrificial focus shifted from that of the
congregation to that which the priest performed on their behalf, and the
connection between the congregation and the Body of Christ was stretched—perhaps
even severed—as the people of God largely forgot what it meant to give
themselves to God each time the sacrament was celebrated.

I have only had the opportunity to bake Communion bread
once. An odd turn of events combined with a scheduling snafu meant that an
important service might be without the fresh baked bread that our congregation
has come to love and expect. I didn’t ask anyone else to do it because I wanted
the chance to try it myself. Although I had never done it before, I had been
taught by the bread guild, and I tried my hardest to replicate their work. The
end result was the decent attempt of a first-time baker who tried his very best
to bake bread that would honor those who usually provide it for our church and also
honor God, who is always willing to receive our faithful offerings. The bread
that day may not have been spectacular, but it was my offering—something I
could bring to God and share with our congregation—and the act of baking and
presenting that bread brought me into the Body of Christ in a way that I had
never experienced before.

What sacrifice do you bring to the Lord’s Table? If you are
not a part of the bread guild, do you help set the Table and clean up after the
service? If you are not a part of the altar guild, do you help welcome people
into our fellowship? If you are not an usher, do you sing God’s praise with all
of your heart? If you are not in the choir, do you proclaim the Word of God
from the lectern? If you are not a lector, do you serve with the clergy at the Table?
If you are not an acolyte or a lay Eucharistic minister, do you spend time telling
our children about Jesus? If you are not a volunteer in Children’s Chapel, do
you arrange flowers for the altar? If you are not a member of the flower guild,
do you help fold the bulletins or set up for lemonade after the service or play
the organ or preach the sermon or vacuum the floor? What sacrifice do you bring
to the Table? What part of yourself do you offer to God each week when we
gather in Jesus’ name?

Holy Communion is not something you that show up once a week
to receive. It is something that you participate in by offering to God the very
best that you have. What sacrifice will you make? What will you bring to the Lord’s
Table? The Body of Christ is not complete without you.

This post originally appeared in the St. John's newsletter. To read the rest of that newsletter and learn more about St. John's, click here.